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> The axles spun and the turning wheels ground small pebbles into granite, of which ricocheted and bounced and fell into the cracked desert floor. A thousand miles to get here and two hundred more to go, and not once had it been as hot as today. I lounged across the open cart, legs hanging by the edge, with a small apple in my hand spoiled and mealy from having spent only a few minutes out in the sun. I chewed. I grunted. And I threw the fruit out into the floor where it splashed into pudding. Kal sat in a corner of the cart, crushing a sack of potatoes beneath his body. His sword too large to fit upwards, instead sitting on its side underneath his feet. He shaved a wooden block with a small knife, bringing it up and blowing shavings across the air.
> A shadow had collected on the canvas walls. I slapped at it and sand fell down the sides.
> "This is hell." I said. "It's hot."
> “I know.” Kal said.
> “My throat’s dry.”
> “I know.”
> “We won’t make it to the capital any time soon, huh.”
> He looked up and tilted his head with a blank expression.
> "I know.”
> “I’m just saying…” I rested my head on my palm and looked out into the road traveled. Two streaks where the wheels had once turned, a million memories in a place beyond the empty space of a flat desert. It was hard to believe we had come from somewhere, or that we were even going anywhere. Look every which way and all you could see was the flat yellow. A few trees. A few bushes of creosote shading mongoose rubbing and rolling in the cool sand. I looked to the roadless land, dry of thought, closing my eyes and drifting.
> The cart rattled and stopped. I jumped forward, hitting my head across the wooden frame. The wheels whined and the horse drivers stepped down and worked a metal road between the front wheels. I looked down to the one closest to me - a green boy named Jacque - and worked my head in between the gap of the canvas tarp.
> “Why’d we stop?” I asked.
> “Cart in front of us told us to stop.”
> “But why?”
> He shrugged. A horse rode fast to the side and down the line of carts. Obrick, with an ivory horn to his lips. He sounded it, looked around, and sounded it again.
> “What’s happening? Are we under attack?”
> “Under attack?” He asked.
> “The hell are we stopping for?”
> “We’ve found a fortune teller.” He said. “Vicentius wants to take a break.”
> I looked to Kal who looked back. He put away his knife and set down his little figurine. A dog dusted with wooden pulp, who wobbled on the floor and fell to its side.
>
>
>
>
> “A fortune teller?” I slapped my horse with the reigns and pressed against its side and it started trotting down. All around us the men and women were stepping down and away, carrying little metal rods and rope and tarps for camp. A boy with a bucket of water over his head ran past us and slipped. A woman chased after him and lifted him by the wrist, she looked up to me.
> “Sorry captain.” She said.
> “I’m no captain.” I said.
> She smiled. “Well sorry, sire.” Then she looked down and whispered something angry into the boy, who just rolled his eyes and started running off with the bucket again.
> “The people are tired, Virgil.” Obrick said. “It’s nice to give them some time to stretch their legs.”
> “As if food shortage wasn’t a problem looming over us.”
> “We’ll be there in a few weeks. I’m sure we’ll manage.”
> “Have you seen the way Kal eats?”
> Obrick smiled.
> “Who’s this fortune teller anyhow?” I asked.
> “She’s from the Livanians. Nomadic people.”
> “That’s what she claims at least.” A man ran past me, nodding and tilting his head. I nodded back. Obligations and all.
> “She’s going around reading the future. A silver a man.” Obrick said.
> “You believe in that fortune shit?” I asked.
> “No. But it’s fun, isn’t it?”
> “Not when we’re delaying travels it’s not.”
> “It’s easy to dismiss it when you already have your future set, isn’t that right, Captain?”
> “No rumor escapes your ears.” I said. “And a rumor is all it is.”
> “Is it?” Obrick rode ahead, smiling. I pinched my nose bridge and lowered my posture, setting my arms on the neck of the horse. Feeling naked on the horse, a simple blouse and trousers where the hot air could slip through easily. A loose hanging knife belt, rattling with jagged edged blades. I’d not replaced them yet. Never would if I were lucky.
> Ahead of me waited a ring of people. I pat my horse on its neck and it stopped and I stepped down, the sun setting into the bloody meridian westward. Red draping like a curtain fall. Or perhaps rise. I tied the horse onto the side onto a Joshua tree, pulling it taut. From me, the men seemed awed. Their mouths open and a glow of candle light casting across their shocked faces. Gasps. Silence. A crowd jeer.
> A man was lifted and surfed the crowd and was shot up into the air. The men drank from mugs, the scent of wine following me as I got closer to the crowd.
> “Lucky bastard.” One said. “Dying rich with a nurse for a wife? How’s that fair, you ugly son of a bitch.”
>
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>
> They dropped him, someone put his arms around his neck and I walked forward, squeezing between them. The woman sat there, an older soothsayer with spider legs for fingers who pinched gingerly the edges of tarot cards. She turned them over and with gray eyes looked up to the newest fool on the table seat.
> “Do not take your helmet off. Ever.” She said.
> The man who looked shocked. The people in the crowd stared with open mouths, some slurping wine and gulping loud.
> I found Vicentius in the crowd. Small, white haired and white skinned. With folded arms, he tilted his head and looked at the soothsayer. I squeezed back into the crowd and shimmied across to the other end of the rim. When I found him, I tugged his arm. He turned and when he saw me, he hugged and drew me in closer to him.
> “Why don’t you give it a try?” He asked.
> “No thanks. I don’t believe in this shit.”
> “Come on, it’s just fun.”
> “Is that why we’re stopping, for fun?” I asked. “We’re so close.”
> “We are.” He said. “But what’s the rush? I thought it’d be a nice distraction.”
> “A distraction from the quarter men we’ve lost?” I said.
> His face went flat.
> “Amongst other things. Yes.”
> “We’re lucky to have kept as many people as we did. But most of the people here still have their stipulations on becoming an ‘army’. And to be frank, even I don’t understand what that means anymore.” I said. “Wouldn’t it be best to actually show them what the future looks like?”
> “I am showing them the future.” Vincent said. “A little rest and a little fun will go a long way on keeping morale. I don’t see us losing a day of time to be the make or break of the future of the Crows.”
> I blew out hot air and sighed and watched the men lining up to sit on the purple clothed table. Speckled with the white, a false night sky across the low table. A young boy kept at the Soothsayer’s side, running a sponge of water across her feet. The Soothsayer sat on her side, on a rug, and she waved the young boy away. Legs scarred and yellow with disease.
> On the table rested some jars. Some vials. Little burlak sacks with loose fitted thread ties. Some stained and greasy at their bottoms. A clay pot spun, hanging by chain on a metal stand. From its rims, wild growing roots and flours and dried spices dangled by limp wire.
> She looked up to me. Blind eyes staring at me. We all took notice and the men starting to turn their heads towards me. They started to part.
> “Come on captain.” One said in the crowd.
> “I’m not a captain.” I whispered.
> “Get in that chair, Virgil. Come on!”
> “Yeah. Yeah!”
> They clapped and drank and jeered. Vincent pushed me outside the crowd, laughing and clapping with the men.
> “You’ve sent me someone special. King of kings.” The Soothsayer said.
> “A special one indeed.” Vincent said.
> I rolled my tongue inside my mouth and found my seat closet to the floor. Which was little more than a pillow by a propped up spine of wood.
> “Do I just sit here or something?” I asked. “You gonna use those cards?”
> “For you? No.” She said.
> We studied her. A black shape bent and irregular, parchment thin skin clinging to the knobs and sanded bones of her chest cavity. There, beating a dark heart behind her thin flesh and even thinner cloak. Indiscernible whether she was born with the dark robes or not, for all of her seemed to be one piece. One hide. A Maine Coon cat perhaps. Old, used, operating by mere luck. Holding still to the same sideways plant, her body shape forming a kind of rictus against the dark yellow earth. The boy to her side rose and stooped underneath the covers of the table. Out came Mortar. Out came the pestle.
> The small femurs of a little vixen broken, dried of all marrow, crumbled into the bottom of the bowl. Mushroom. A plucked root smelling of licorice burned at the edge of a candle. The fire turned green and she threw the smoking end in. Waxy, greasy lard dirty and veined with red. A small skull. She lifted it with her spider like fingers and pressed it between her palms. It snapped, eye cavities collapsing into themselves.
> The bowl burned and the smoke rose to my face and space disappeared. Floating. Gently floating and spinning in the dark sky of her patterned table cloth, a formless shade like Mother Soothsayer herself. She grabbed my hand. Anchored me to the bowl. The green fire rose from the bone and herb and fatty concoction.
> “I am She who sees all. Killer of kings.” She said. “Oh, you poor fool. Traveling to your own guillotine. A man comfortable with the slot around his head.”
> She rubbed my hand.
> “But what is this?” She rolled her head. The crowd disappeared, their shadows remained. Only me and her and the small child to the side staring at me with bored eyes. Me wobbling and the fires turning, like a chandelier hanging from nothing in an expanse in the void.
> She clenched.
> “None of us can know the darkness of God’s plan.” She said. “You accept this, don’t you? Struggler, ye are. Fool, ye are.”
> She smoked rose. My head fell back.
> “Harbinger. Death follows you and reveals the frailty of flesh. So weak men are. Men you have killed, men you have yet to kill. It is hard to believe we are anything more than dream.” She said. “Yes. Yes.”
> She looked into the bowl, bubbling fat and coalbone splattering and popping. I leaned forward as she tightened our grip. The burn of her magicks stinging my fingers, branding them red.
> “You see it? See it child of God. Open your eyes.” She said. “You will burn his dreams. You will burn his city brick by brick.”
> My eyelids struggled. I shook my head and blinked and looked past the column of ash and smoke. Inside I saw the fire. Inside I saw Sylas. Inside I saw Kal. Inside I saw Obrick. The Silverfangs. The fourteen. Dead. Dead. Dead.
> Standing amongst the wreckage: Vicentius Volarus.